Re: Copyright assignment

[Miguel de Icaza <miguel ximian com>]

Hello,

> > The document is a contract in which you grant permission to Novell to
> > reuse your creation (you own the copyright to it) to be distributed
> > under any terms that Novell wishes to in addition to the GPL version.
> 
> Another thing I am unclear about having re-read it in detail. If the
> same code gets submitted to multiple projects for example open office
> and evolution how will it work out.
> 
> Copyright assignments seem to have an evil side effect so far
> overlooked. Since Novell would own the copyright it would no longer be
> possible to contribute the same code to Open Office. Thus if Gnome
> begins to accept such things the ability to reuse code is destroyed. 

The developer gets the code back to `use the Works as developers sees
fit'.

> Similarly it removes the ability to build on code by reuse, since the
> owner of the code being reused may not wish to assign the use and cannot
> viably go around assigning it to Novell, Sun and everyone else.

I do not understand your scenario.

> Since the contract says "supporting files" that appears to prohibit
> submitting a patch to Evolution which uses a third party library since
> that third party library is "supporting files" and the contributor does
> not own it.

We could not incorporate such code;  See section 6(a).

I cant paste, I only have a printout at home.

Miguel